1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for recognizing a preceding vehicle by the use of image processing technology and measuring a distance to the recognized vehicle.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Heretofore, as described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent HEI 1-281600, some such apparatuses for recognizing a preceding vehicle have traced edges extracted from images to extract a preceding vehicle existing region.
However, such conventional vehicle recognition apparatuses have had a problem in that where vehicle edges extracted by an edge extraction process have a disconnection, the region cannot be exactly extracted. The distance measuring by stereo vision also has had a problem in that there is developed a difference between the vehicle shapes observed by the right-hand and left-hand cameras, so that a correlation between two images is hardly established.